


this is who we are (we are children of the fire)

by DJayJay, koalabear77



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crossover, I'll ad tags along the way, Multi, X-men kinda thingy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2018-11-29 01:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11430117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJayJay/pseuds/DJayJay, https://archiveofourown.org/users/koalabear77/pseuds/koalabear77
Summary: Aden took a deep breath then, swallowing visibly and straightening himself, looking taller than before.“My name is Aden Jacob Griffin,” he said then, voice strong, not a hint of hesitation in his tone as he locked his gaze with Clarke. “I am your son, and I was sent back in time to take Azgeda Corporation and Charles Pike down.”Or,I don't know what I'm doing.





	1. Chapter 1

 

For some reasons, Aden thought he could have put up with it a bit longer. It wasn't that hard, after all; a little shrug here, some evasive answer there. Whenever things got a bit too personal for him, he just had to make a face and shrug, and people would not question it any further.

It worked perfectly at first.

When he first showed up at TriKru Meal, Lexa asked questions. Of course she did; as the owner and founder of the company, she had responsibilities. While the first one was to make sure that anyone showing up for a job could be useful to the company, the second one was to make sure that said company remained safe for anyone working there. So she asked questions about him and his family and why a fifteen years old boy would need a job. Lying to Lexa wasn't that hard, mostly because it wasn't really lying. It was more a twist of the truth. She understood the world they lived in better than anybody else and didn't pry much into people's lives. She just asked the basics.

When Aden told her that he had no parents anymore and no one to help him pay for school, she accepted to hire him. She couldn't have him biking around town delivering orders as he was underage for a job, but she agreed to take him in and made him her new room boy.

It was when Clarke entered the picture that things got messy.

Clarke wasn't nosy, per say, but she liked to know about people around her. And when Aden ran into her full speed one day, she came looking after him and asked questions. The boy totally expected the questions, so he had made some fail-safe answers, but Clarke was no Lexa. Clarke knew.

From the very first twist of the truth, she knew Aden was hiding something, and she was determined to understand what it was. He couldn't blame her, really: the world as they knew it was a shitty place, and to trust the wrong person could be the last thing you would ever do.

What Aden didn't expect was for Clarke to call him out on his “bullshit” barely a month after meeting him, and for her to have Lexa as her backup.

Lexa trusted the boy, as far as she could trust anyone outside of her family, but she seemed to trust Clarke even more.

“You knew about Miller being in danger,” Clarke accused coldly, and Aden bit his lower lip.

“You knew about the company being under investigation and the work inspectors coming,” Lexa added, and at this point, there were nothing Aden could do.

There was no lie he could think of that would take him out of this situation.

The boy settled for the truth, as any more damage in the trust both Lexa and Clarke had in him could be fatal to his plan. 

Aden took a deep breath then, swallowing visibly and straightening himself, looking taller than before.

“My name is Aden Jacob Griffin,” he said then, voice strong, not a hint of hesitation in his tone as he locked his gaze with Clarke, “I am your son, and I was sent back in time to take Azgeda Corporation and Charles Pike down.”

 

[…]

# One month ago #

 

Lexa was more than aware that some of her employees weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. They didn't need to be, after all; the tasks they were given were mostly mundane.

All they needed to do was take a bag from point A (the restaurant) to point B (a delivery address), and that was it. Most of them could do it quite easily.

And then there was Jasper Jordan. Out of all the idiots and incompetents that once walked through the door of TriKru Meal, Jasper definitely took the cake. Even Aden, who had only been working here for two weeks, had proved himself to be more reliable and trustworthy than Jordan, who had months of exeperiences already.

"Tell me what happened again," Lexa said as she closed her eyes and braced herself.

_"So I was biking down 5th Avenue, and some guy came from behind, drove past me in his car, and suddenly took a sharp left and hit the front wheel of my bike. I crashed down and so did the bag and now everything's messed up and I can't deliver."_

"What were you even doing on 5th Avenue? You were supposed to go to the other side of town."

_"What? But the GPS-"_

"Your GPS is jammed, Jordan, I already told you that. Come back to base; we'll dispatch your orders to someone else."

Lexa hung up her phone before he could even add anything else, and the brunette sighed heavily, shaking her head. This jackass was going to make everything late on an almost perfect day.

Aden, seated next to the brunette, watching on a computer screen the flow of delivery people coming and going, glanced at his superior.

"You know, I could do it."

"No you can't."

"Yes I can."

"Aden, you -"

"Look," the boy stopped her midtrack, "here's the thing: it's seven meals that need to be delivered at four different places, all before 12:30. We have no one available yet. Sure, based on their stats, Bryan or Tris should be back in a little over fifteen minutes, which would give them only, what, 8 minutes to make all the deliveries on time. We both know that won't happen because one might get a flat tire or have a difficult customer, and so Jasper's deliveries are going to be late. Or, I could do it."

As if on cue, the group chat made specifically for the delivery people's urgency suddenly ringed blue, and Lexa opened it on her own screen, flashing Brian's name, "imma be late, flat tire," followed by Tris, "everyone decided to be lazy fucks today, I've been waiting for the guy to come downstairs for like, seven minutes now."

Aden kept his grin for himself as Lexa sighed heavily, upset at how the day was suddenly going wrong. It had almost been perfect. Sure, Lincoln was absent for some time, but Anya had managed to handle his part just fine so far, and everything was on time. But now it wasn't anymore. 

Under the glove she was wearing out of habit, the brunette felt her fingers grow cold, and she took her hands out of the computer to squeeze them into fists.

"Get ready," she ordered to the boy next to her, and Aden almost jumped from his chair.

"Remind me the rules," she asked as he bent down to redo his shoelaces.

"Do not stop in crowded areas. Avoid cops, firemen, postmen, anything that wears a uniform. Be polite with the customers. Be on time. Get right back as soon as you're done."

"And don't run into people."

Aden bobbed his head approvingly before taking his jacket off. It was going to be a bother more than anything else, so he decided against it. The weather wasn't as cold as the delivery team had made it seem.

Aden prepared a bag then. Seven meals. Inside a huge rectangular backpack, he stacked seven white bags on the top shelf, and seven lunch boxes on the bottom shelf. Once he made sure that nothing was either going to move or spill, he closed the bag and put it on his back.

"I'll be right back," he announced as he readjusted the bag on his back. "Leave the door open."

The door, already open, almost closed itself from the strength of the wind that flew inside the restaurant when Aden started running. 

 

Aden ran into someone.

 

Aden barely ever worked as a delivery person. He knew the city well enough, having gone through the streets more than often, but Lexa never really wanted him to do the deliveries. Part of that was because he couldn't, for the life of him, stand on a bike, but also because he was fifteen and shouldn't even be working for her in the first place. Having an underage delivery person would be bad publicity for the company.

The last reason was because Lexa didn't want him to use his capacities in the light of day (at nighttime either, but she didn't need to know what he was doing when she wasn't looking).

Aden was _fast_.

Fast enough to roam through pedestrians without them seeing, fast enough for people to believe he was just a very strong blast of wind passing them by.

Fast enough to be long gone before anyone even thought of catching him.

Aden was also a careless idiot.

Not paying much attention to what was happening in front of him as he checked his phone to look at the next turn he needed to make on his GPS, Aden didn't see it coming.

A sharp turn on the left, someone suddenly appearing in front of him.

Aden _crashed_ into someone.

They both went flying haphazardly to the ground, feet apart from each other, and Aden loudly swore on everything he knew.

Now that was painful.

A string of swear words escaped the mouth of the person he crashed into, and he suddenly got on his feet and jogged at a normal pace toward her.

“I'm sorry, are you okay?” he exclaimed as he extended a hand toward her.

Until then massaging her painful belly, the girl he had run into lifted her eyes toward him, deep blue orbs boring into apologetic clear blue eyes.

“Are you fucking nuts?” she snarled at him, and the boy, taken aback, retrieved his hand and took a step back.

“Uh, sorry?” he repeated, unsure.

“No. When you crash into someone that way, you better leave. Make a run for it, or whatever it is that you do. Do not stay, keep running. What if I were a cop? And how stupid can you fucking be for doing that in broad daylight?!”

“Excuse you,” Aden huffed, “but I'm pretty sure you did it too, so don't lecture me!”

“Who are the cops are going to believe? The thirteen something who should be in school or the adult on lunch break?”

“I'm fifteen,” Aden crossed his arm over his chest, annoyed.

The woman sighed heavily, ruffling her blonde hair with one hand as she helped herself up with the other.

“You have to be more careful; you could get in trouble.”

“It's not like they can catch me,” Aden huffed then and the woman's eyes grew dark for seconds.

“Nobody's safe, kid, nobody.”

She got back to her previous self in an instant, deep blue eyes roaming the light blue sky above them for a few seconds. Those little few seconds were all Aden needed to take a proper look at the woman he had just crashed into, and he felt his guts twist uncomfortably.

The woman was undeniably pretty; long wavy blond hair, ocean deep blue eyes. She was taller than him by a few inches, and while she probably wasn't older than twenty, her face lines and stature indicated that had lived through her fair share of tragedy.

Aden dropped his head and looked at his feet, suddenly self-conscious of his actions.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, and the woman sighed.

She put her hands in her jean back pocket and got a piece of paper out of it that she handed to the boy.

“If you ever get in trouble, or if you need help controlling your abilities, just call that number. And be fucking careful.”

Aden took the card and looked at it for some time, perplexed by the twist of events. Was she lecturing him or helping him?

But before he could ask anything, he realized, as he took his eyes off the card and looked in front of him where the lady had been previously standing, that she was gone.

On the piece of paper that he folded quickly and put into his jean's pocket, handwritten in blue ink, could be seen a ten digit phone number and what could be understood as a group name: Sky Crew.

 

[…]

 

Clarke Griffin hated her job just as much as she hated being crashed into by some inconsiderate kid who made use of his abilities with such carelessness.

And now she was late.

She didn't need to clock back in for one more hour, but she was still late to her lunch date with Raven, and she was just really mad at that kid for being so stupid.

Sure, she wasn't really smart either, jumping from one place to another, but at least she knew enough of the city to know where she could pop in. And she wasn't stupid enough to not hide her face behind a large hood as to not be seen if she ever got in the wrong place.

So Clarke was mad, and as soon as she gave the card to the kid, Clarke simply and naturally put her right hand on her left shoulder, and she was gone.

Clarke popped out.

She popped back in on the other side of town, inside the basement of an old and unused mall that she and her friends came to use as one of their bases. It wasn't perfect. It was humid and cold and, when they first got there, there was not running water or electricity. But they made it work.

They brought tables and chairs and couches and electric generators. They were still working on the running water part, but the more it went, the more it felt like home.

A place where they could be themselves.

A place where she could just pop from one place to another.

A place where Raven could just lay flat on her back, looking at the ceiling and mumbling to herself without looking crazy.

A place where Octavia could create mini tornadoes in her hands without getting arrested.

Home, indeed.

While Octavia wasn't here messing the place up with her wind, Raven was definitely laying on her back, on the floor, mumbling to the ceiling in whatever language she was speaking.

According to the ones and zeros that came out of her mouth at an impressive pace, it seemed like she was giving binary orders to her computer again, and so Clarke walked up to her and snapped her fingers in front of her eyes. The brunette almost startled before huffing in annoyance.

“You're late.”

“I have lunch?”

“You're forgiven. What do we got?” the brunette asked as she sat up on the floor, her computer forgotten at the appeal of food.

“Not crushed Subway, I hope; some kid ran into me full speed and sent me flying away.”

Clarke took her backpack off of her back and opened it, relieved to see the food more or less intact in it.

“Define full speed?”

Clarke thought for a second, the curious brown eyes of her friend watching her.

“Faster than fast.”

“That's totally helping, Griffin.”

“Shut up and eat your sandwich, Reyes.”

“Aye aye, captain,” Raven responded as she snatched the small bag Clarke was handing her.

“Any news from O?” Clarke asked as she sat in front of her friend on the nearest couch – Raven had a weird appeal for the floor every now and then, but Clarke was one for comfort.

“She sent a snap this morning; Lincoln broke his pinky, and they went to the hospital. She seems good. She gained some weight. I bet they're getting some good food on their way.”

Clarke still didn't grasp why, all of the sudden, Octavia and Lincoln decided to go on a road trip for a few months, but she couldn't blame them, really.

Life was shit.

 

(If Clarke had paid any better attention when she got to her phone and opened the snap Raven had mentioned earlier, she would have noticed the hospital and the sign at the entrance, the name of the building: Ark Emergency.

Who in their right mind goes on a road trip without leaving the town they lived in?)

 

“Hey, do you know anything about TriKru Meal?” Clarke asked between bites of her sandwich.

Raven thought for a bit.

“Isn't that the company Jasper works for?”

“Yeah,” Clarke nodded, “the kid that ran into me had a delivery bag and a TriKru Meal t-shirt, so I guess he works for them, but he's like fifteen.”

Raven seemed to think again before looking over at her computer. Raising a hand toward it, she brought her thumb and index closer together, up until there were only the size of the screen from where she was sitting on the floor. A swift motion of her hand to the left, and her screen was projected on the white, immaculate wall facing her. She swallowed the remains of her sandwich before opening an internet page without moving from her place on the floor, and in the research bar slowly appeared “trikru meal” before she blinked.

Results started to flow on the screen. One more blink, and a Wikipedia page opened in front of the women.

“TriKru Meal,” Raven said as she started reading the article, “let's see... They opened about six months ago, delivery only. They're open at lunch, but not in the evening. They do just one menu per day and deliver to mostly professionals. They started with like three delivery persons and now have a little over a hundred people delivering a little over 1,000 lunches per day. That's a lot.”

Raven kept reading for a bit more while Clarke looked at the article, at the name of the founder of the company: Alexandria Woods.

“Isn't Woods Lincoln's family name? Isn't he, like, working there too? I remember him saying he worked as a dispatch manager or something.”

“Could be; he said his sister started her own company when they all got out of the army and that he worked with her.”

Clarke got quiet for a second. She was looking for something, but it wasn't quite that.

“Can you look into the forum?”

“Why?” Raven asked as she blinked a few times, opening a private navigation internet page and typing the familiar URL of the forum.

“It usually holds more info than lambda internet.”

The forum was a resourceful base for people like Clarke and Raven. For “advanced humans,” as they liked to call themselves – the government called them “threats,” but that was a story for another time.

For people that were considered threats, getting information about themselves and people like them was dire, and more than often, it was useless to look on the lambda internet. The forum held information about places to go if you ever got into trouble, advanced human friendly doctors that would help you get the medicine you needed if you ever got sick, but also jobs that hired advanced humans, knowingly or not. In the ever-growing paranoia that the government had made take root in its citizens brains, the forum was a safe haven for kids and adults and, really, anyone who needed help.

Once Raven blinked the “trikru meal” name into the forum, a few dozen threads appeared, and as Clarke had guessed, they were an Advanced Human friendly company.

Raven blinked on some of the threads and read about how “Alexandria,” the owner of the company, hired anyone who showed up at her doors without asking for blood tests or medical certification like other companies are inclined to do.

One of the threads even mentioned that some people inside the walls of the restaurant made use of their capacities as a way to help the restaurant grow and that Alexandria let them do so.

Clarke frowned at that.

“Let's say there's a high chance Lincoln works there. Do you think he’s one of us?”

“Clarke, the dude broke a door simply by opening it; how did you even think that he _wasn't_ one of us?”

“... Right, fair enough. The kid is still too young to work for them, though.”

“Maybe he's off the book? What’s got you so worked up anyway? It's not the first time you ran into someone using their capacities; remember Jasper?”

“Jasper is high on a regular basis and can't control his eyes; that's why he wears those hideous goggles you gave him.”

Raven laughed at that because Japser _loved_ those glasses, but truth be told, they _were_ hideous.

Clarke, on the other hand, grew quiet. The kid, whoever he was, hadn't run away. Jasper, when he ran into Clarke, completely lost as he couldn't control his eyes well, actually tried to run away. The kid didn't.

He was either too confident in his capacities or too careless, and Clarke wouldn't have it.

Her father had done that, and he became an example not to follow on the very next day.

The first ever advanced human to be executed for using his powers in front of the world and presenting himself as a threat.

Clarke couldn't let that happen to anyone else.

 

Miller sent a frantic – as frantic as Miller could get – text to the forum chat on the same day asking if anyone knew about an extremely fast kid. Because said kid saved his ass earlier that day when the campus police showed up at his dorm with cops on their heels, and he needed to thank him, but also ask him what the fuck he had been doing there on that day, at that very moment.

The timing seemed to be too perfect to be unintentional.

 

[…]

 

Clarke passed the door of Trikru Meal come Wednesday at 10am sharp.

She had asked Jasper about the habit of the owner of the company, and after some inquisition on his part, Jasper had been able to inform her that Alexandria came in at nine every morning along with her apprentice, who he forgot the name of, and the two managers.

Not willing to disturb them too much, Clarke settled for showing up a bit later, and as she expected, the apprentice swore loudly when he saw her. Alexandria didn't even bother to lift her eyes from her computer.

“Don't swear, Aden.”

Clarke had to clear her throat for Alexandria to actually notice her, and the brunette's piercing green eyes met Clarke's for a brief second before she turned her head toward the back of the room.

“Anya, someone's here.”

“I'll take care of it!” Aden announced as he stood from his chair and walked toward Clarke.

Alexandria shrugged at that and focused back on her computer.

 

Somewhere in the back of her head, Alexandria denied that that woman's eyes were the prettiest thing she had ever seen.

 

“Come with me,” Aden said as he walked past Clarke, and they both went back outside, Aden closing the door behind them both and forcing himself to scowl to stop any hint of a smile showing up on his face.

“Why are you here?” the boy asked once he was sure that his boss wasn't paying any attention to him and that his face wouldn't betray him.

“I wanted to ask your boss if she knew about you running into people.”

Aden sighed and ruffled his hair with his hand, visibly annoyed by the situation.

“I already apologized for that.”

“Maybe you should apologize to the two officers whose jaws you broke on Monday, too.”

Aden raised a brow at her.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Maybe you should try to be a bit more convincing when you lie, Aden.”

The boy almost winced at that because Clarke was using her adult voice on him and Lexa was doing that already and he honestly didn't need people to baby-sit him just because he was young and _careless_ – hell, he could do whatever he wanted.

“Look, here's the thing,” Aden said after some time, “I could tell you that I was on campus on Monday and that I did kick two officer's asses and knock a police campus officer out, but that would make you my accomplice and you'd be in trouble for not turning me in when you learned about my whereabouts. Or, I could tell you that I _don't know_ what you're talking about and you could keep going on with your life.”

Clarke looked at the boy facing her intently, watching his every expression as he spoke and even after he finished talking. They held each other's gazes for a bit until the blonde broke the silence.

“How did you know they were going to come after Miller?”

“I didn't,” Aden shrugged, “I was just at the right place at the right moment.”

“Once again,” Clarke sighed, “try to be more convincing when you lie.”

“Gotta keep a bit of my mysteries for myself, don't you think?” Aden shrugged once more, and Clarke ran her hand down her face.

“That's the story you want to go with?” Clarke groaned and the boy didn't say anything. “Fine,” she groaned again, and then, “do we need to hide Miller?”

Aden wasn't sure if it was a question or an afterthought, from the quietness of her voice, and he stopped himself from replying with vehemence that _yes_ , they needed to hide him somewhere nobody would find him. He kept his face collected and just shrugged. “What do you think?”

 

(Anya tried to tune out their voices. She tried focusing on her work and earplugs, but the vibrations emanating from them both, especially the woman, were too much for her to ignore.

When she heard about Aden running into people and kicking asses, she may or may not have unintentionally typed the wrong line of code into the servers, and she may or may not have taken them down.)

 

After almost an hour of questions and evasive answers – and a lot of shrugging on Aden's part – eleven came crashing in, and Aden took Brian and Tris' arrival at the restaurant as his cue to leave Clarke and go back inside.

The blonde wasn't satisfied with his answers; he could easily tell from the way she huffed at him and how her mouth stilled open when he announced that he needed to get to work. But she had come to him, and now the plan was in motion.

Inside the restaurant, Aden moved swiftly between people and furniture to get the first orders ready to go while smiling to himself.

At the same moment, in the back of the restaurant, Anya typed the control of the first algorithm into the servers. This one was supposed to dispatch the orders that needed to be delivered at eleven-thirty to the delivery persons present into the restaurant, but it didn't start.

“What the shit,” she mumbled from her computer, and Lexa rose a brow toward her.

Anya tried again a few more times, but still no results.

“Dude,” she called out to her sister, “we have a problem.”

“Explain,” Lexa calmly stated, and Anya sighed.

“The algorithms are down. We need to do everything ourselves.”

If Lexa was surprised by that, she didn't show anything on her face, but her hands balled into fists as she took them away from her keyboard.

“Anya, there's one thousand three hundred and two orders today. How do you expect us to do that?”

Anya chewed on her bottom lip for a bit. Without Lincoln, she didn't expect them to get anything done, really. Computers were his shit, not hers. She was a staff manager. She took the new kids in, showed them the ropes, took care of the logistics and the broken bikes, while Lincoln handled everything remotely electronic, from smartphone applications to lightbulbs.

“Lincoln gave me a phone number before he left, saying we could call her if we needed help. She helped him with the app a few months back, one of Octavia's friends or something. I can call her and, until she can come in, we put Aden on dispatch,” Anya proposed, and Lexa thought about it for a bit.

The only one who could possibly type fast enough to dispatch all the orders on time was Aden, but the boy hadn't been trained for that part of the job yet. Lexa only made him take care of easier things, such as answering emails and preparing the delivery bags.

“I can do it,” Aden agreed as he walked toward them and sat next to Lexa, in front of the computer she had assigned to him. “Eleven-thirty is just thirty-two orders anyway.”

And before Lexa could even add anything, Aden was already on the dispatch software and started typing line of code after line of code. Soon enough, Bryan and Tris's phones chirped with delivery information, and they both started to prepare for their first tour of the day.

As Anya stood from her chair to make a phone call, probably calling in the help she had talked about earlier, Lexa kept her eyes on Aden.

She hadn't shown him. She was sure of that. And neither had Lincoln, because the guy had only been around Aden for a week or so before claiming he needed a holiday and leaving town with his girlfriend.

Lexa hadn't show him how to use the software, what kind of code to use, how the orders where classified into the data-base. She hadn't, and yet, he knew. He perfectly knew what to type and how to type it, and in only a few minutes, the boy had dispatched the thirty-three eleven-thirty orders to the five delivery persons waiting in the main room. And they were all gone only five minutes after they received their orders on their smartphones.

Aden sighed in relief after checking the map and making sure he didn't do anything stupid like sending one of them on the west side of town for a delivery while making them go the the east side of it for the previous one.

Everything was in order.

Everything was on track.

After making sure that everyone was on their way, thanks to all the moving green dots on the map of his computer, the boy leaned back on his chair and cracked his fingers.

“As good as new,” he nodded, proud of himself, and Lexa raised a brow at him.

“I didn't teach you that,” she said, and Aden’s eyebrows raised high on his forehead.

“I told you I knew how these things worked when I got there.”

“All software is different.”

“What can I say,” he shrugged after some time, “I'm a natural.”

 

Lexa knew a lot of things about the world they lived in and the people she worked with. And if there was anything that Lexa was sure of, it was that Aden was a shitty liar.

 

Anya heard two tonalities before someone picked up the phone number Lincoln gave her. 

“ _Hello?”_ came from the other end of the line, more like grumble.

“Is this Raven Reyes?” the woman asked as she pressed the side of her phone to turn the sound as low as possible.

“ _Herself. If you're trying to sell me a vacuum cleaner, I'm gonna blow up your place.”_

“Nice,” Anya drawled, and for a second, she wondered why on earth Lincoln would give her some lunatic's number. But she really needed the help.

“Look, I work at Trikru Meal with Lincoln Woods, and we need help. He gave me your number before he left with Octavia; you're her friend, right? The dude left us with the computers, and we're having a major bug. Can you show up?”

“ _Ha, yeah, that. What do I get in exchange?”_

“Forty for the shift and a free meal.”

“ _Hold on.”_

Anya heard some moving around and what was probably supposed to be whispers between Raven Reyes and whoever she was with, but she perfectly heard whatever they were saying, and she tried to make the sound of her smartphone even lower, but she had already reached the lowest.

“ _Dude, can you pop me out?”_ she heard one saying, and the other groaned that she had just gotten here and some other muttering about owning her one. Just after that, Raven came back onto the line, and Anya had to take the phone away from her ear at the sudden loudness of her voice.

“ _Do you have a safe place where I can land?”_

“Are you planning on crashing down?”

“ _Nah, don't worry. But I can either be here in twenty minutes or I can be here in twenty seconds. Your choice.”_

“ _Where do you need me to take you?_ ” she heard the other person asking, and she recognized that voice, those vibrations. The same as the one who lectured Aden earlier for almost one hour.

“ _Trikru Meal”_ was Raven's answer, and the other woman groaned again.

“ _I just got back from there, what the fuck.”_

“ _So,”_ Raven asked again, this time speaking to Anya, _“do you have a place for me to land?”_

“Tell you friend to 'pop you', whatever that means, inside the restaurant, right above the steps that go to the back of the main room.”

“ _Is it safe?”_ Raven asked then, voice meaningful.

“Is anything really safe,” Anya muttered and she heard Raven sigh.

“ _Alright, be there in a minute.”_

True to her word, Raven 'popped in' just a minute later, right above the steps, the blonde woman that had lecture Aden earlier next to her.

But Raven also needed a second to come back from the high of the popping. It was never really easy to teleport along with Clarke. While the blonde was never bothered by it, it took other people by surprise and sometimes made them nauseous. Raven was getting better at it, but it was not really her favorite way of transportation. The fastest for sure, but not her favorite. Buses were slow, but buses didn't make her want to throw her stomach up.

“Okay,” Raven said after a minute, once the queasiness washed away, “what can I do for you people?”

 

Lexa's eyes met Clarke's gaze once again.

Lexa pretended it wasn't the prettiest thing she had seen in her whole life once again.

 

[...]

 

That night, when Aden came back to the place he lived at – some kind of a broom closet with nothing but a mattress on the floor, clothes scattered all around, and a computer – he sat on his mattress and grabbed his backpack.

The boy took a can of soda out of it, soon followed by a heavy display book that he put next to him before taking a sip of his drink. He had never tasted that one before, and he enjoyed the sparkling bubbles on his tongue for a few seconds before he opened the book.

The plan wasn't going quite like it was supposed to. There were anomalies and hiccups at times that he couldn't quite grasp.

Aden put the book on his lap and looked at the first page of it, a timeline of sorts. The first line of the page had been highlighted, marked as successful.

Find Alexandria Woods and become one of her employees: check.

Find Clarke Griffin and make her notice you: check.

Find Nathan Miller and do not let him be taken: check.

Next part of the plan had been Raven Reyes, but that part had gotten out of hand as Raven made an appearance herself at the restaurant earlier that day.

Something wasn't working the way it was supposed to. Things were going faster than they were planned, and Aden wasn't sure if it was a good or a bad thing.

Aden turned the page to the next one and looked at the two pages next to each other with something akin to softness in his eyes.

“Alexandria Woods” appeared on the left page with a picture of her and every little bit of information he could have gotten about her prior to coming. The right page was the same, only it read “Raven Reyes.” The thirty-ish next pages weren't really different. All about people and places and information.

Aden turned them all at once and got to the last one.

Unlike all the other pages, which had all been typed from a computer and then printed, the last ones where handwritten.

There were things and people that he hadn't been aware of prior to coming here.

Anya Woods was one of them, so he had made a new page specifically for her. In capital letters and blue ink at the top of the page, he could read her name, and underneath, all the information he had been able to get about her.

More allies could always be useful. Even if it wasn't part of the original plan, Anya was here now, and he might as well make use of her.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aden's next steps into the past.

After a not so uneventful week, Aden showed up at Sky Crew's base on Friday afternoon, hot on Anya's heals as the woman passed the door of the underground parking garage and kept walking straight toward the only door they could see.

Raven stuck around at Trikru for the rest of the week and would be around until Lincoln returned, at Lexa's demand. Both Raven and Anya were happy to accept the offer as Raven could put some money in her pocket and Anya could focus on something other than computers.

Aden had heard about Sky Crew's meeting at work when Raven mentioned it to Anya, and Lexa had invited them to show up, see what this was all about, and maybe give some help if they felt like it. Raven also mentioned something about Anya's hearing, something he hadn't been able to understand as the Latina woman had spoken in a very quiet voice, and so he asked if he could join.

Up until then, he hadn't been able to tell if Anya was one of them or not, but maybe this little outing could give him some clue.

Of course, he pretended to just be curious when Raven asked why he wanted to come (he had perfect control of his abilities and knew how to train himself to become faster), and Raven didn't ask any further. But Aden already knew what Sky Crew was all about.

Sky Crew had been created some time ago at Raven's proposition to Clarke and Octavia. She had already helped Clarke and Octavia and some other people to comprehend and control their powers, but she wanted to make the best of it. She wanted a place other than her dorm room to become a base and to help people from all over town and even further. She wanted to do research and tests and to expend her understanding of Advanced Humans. Raven was smart, after all, and if she could use her brain to do some good, help people and learn new things, she was more than happy to.

While the initial team had been made of Octavia, Clarke, and Raven, people added themselves along the way. Kind of. There was Jasper, who had met Clarke in the streets and became a regular at Sky Crew. There were also Monty Green and Nathan Miller and countless others who had received help from Sky Crew and who decided to stick around. Every Friday, the abandoned mall would welcome an underground community made of twenty-ish people that would welcome any new-comers and hand them some help and drinks and a place where they felt like they belonged.

Anya opened the last door and gestured for Aden to come in first, and she closed the door behind them. From a gloomy spooky abandoned parking lot, they went into a fully lighted and welcoming basement.

There were pictures and posters on the concrete walls, couches and chairs scattered all around the place, and people happily chatting here and there. Spot lights had been fixed on each wall and converged the light to the center of the room, where most of the couches and chairs were, and here and there could be seen fridges and tables full of drinks and food.

Aden smiled upon seeing the place. It hadn't changed much from what he remembered of it, even though he hadn't been able to come back here in a while.

Raven hijacked Anya as soon as she saw her and dragged her into yet another room, a much smaller one that the boy knew to be Raven's “office,” and he was left to his own devices.

The boy roamed toward the nearest table and grabbed something to eat before he walked toward one of the couches, the one where Jasper had been sitting probably for some time already, and sat next to him. He took a bite of his muffin and tried not to get overjoyed at the taste of Monty's banana chocolate-chip muffin. It had been a while since he had eaten one.

“Oh!” Jasper exclaimed upon recognizing him, but the man's eyes suddenly filled with fear and Aden laughed a bit.

“Lexa's not here,” Aden reassured him, and Jasper sighed heavily as he readjusted his goggles on his eyes.

“Guys,” Jasper called to the two people sitting on the next couch, and the two men lifted their eyes to look at him. “This is Aden, he works at TriKru, he's Lexa's apprentice. And Aden, this is Monty and Miller.”

“Nice to meet you.” Aden nodded politely, and Monty smiled and asked him about his job at TriKru, while Miller narrowed his eyes at him. Aden did his best to ignore him and replied to Monty with enthusiasm.

“The staff team is really nice,” he said with a smile. “I don't really know where I'd be if it weren't for them. And Lexa. She's the one who took me in.”

Jasper made a face then because Jasper was nothing if not scared of both Lexa and Anya.

“They are a little bit uptight,” Jasper said with a grimace, and Aden shrugged.

“TriKru Meal is a family, and they're the parents. They have to be.”

“Okay, but why does Lexa hate me so much?” Jasper asked with a resigned face, and Aden laughed.

“Maybe because you fuck up all the time,” Miller said then, finally looking away from the new boy and getting back into the conversation. “You told us about some stuff you did, and if it was my company, I'd be pissed too. Who the hell asks for someone's number while on the clock? Not professional, dude.”

“Babe, be nice,” Monty reprimanded, and Miller huffed.

Well, Miller wasn't wrong, and Monty wasn't stupid enough to stand by Jasper's side when he was doing stupid shit. It was a mystery why the guy still had his job at TriKru Meal; if anything, Lexa should have fired him the same day she received the phone call of a customer complaining about the delivery dude asking for her number. But she hadn't, and Monty didn't really understand why. No one did, honestly, not even Jasper, who was asked the next day to show up early and received an half-an-hour lecture before being told to get ready for work.

“I think she's just nice,” Aden shrugged and Jasper sent him a look.

“I'm pretty sure she wanted to murder me.”

“I would have,” Miller grumbled, and Monty glared at him.

“You're cranky today,” the Asian boy realized as he looked at his boyfriend. “Take your beanie off and I'll play with your hair?”

Miller huffed once more but complied and took his beanie off before laying down, his feet over the edge of the couch and his head on Monty's lap.

Miller was definitely cranky, to say the least. He had to sleep in the basement because the cops could show up at his dorm at any moment, he was running short on clothes but was afraid to go outside, and Clarke forbid him from going to his classes. Cranky was an understatement.

But when Monty's fingers started to draw patterns in his short brown locks and on his scalp, the man closed his eyes and let himself relax a little bit.

“Is he okay?” Aden wondered, and Monty glanced fondly at the dark-skinned man lying on him.

Monty drew lines with the tip of his index finger on Miller's temples and went down to drop a kiss on his forehead. Miller sighed happily, dazed by his boyfriend ministrations.

“It'll get better,” Monty hoped as he smiled down at Miller and then raised his eyes toward Aden. “Some laws passed a few weeks ago, and the government is now allowed to look into people's medical records. Miller's capacities were written in his, and they came for him on Monday.”

“Some kid came to help me,” Miller said as he opened his eyes and looked over at Aden, locking his gaze in the blonde's blue orbs. “He was too fast for me to make out his face, though.”

Aden tried to remain unfazed under Miller's deep brown eyes, but as soon as the man closed them again, the boy gulped and sighed.

“I'm going to get something to drink,” the boy said as he stood from the couch.

Monty looked at his watch at the exact same moment and tried to open his mouth to say something, but before even a sound could come out, Clarke suddenly popped right into Aden and the two went crashing down on the floor, groaning and swearing loudly.

“Don't swear, Aden!” Anya shouted from Raven's office, and the boy groaned once more.

Clarke groaned too before pushing herself away from Aden and standing back.

“Who the fuck forgot to tell him the rules?”

“The rules?” Aden pondered as he stood as well, holding his unfinished muffin in one hand and dusting off his clothes with the other.

The boy didn't remember any kind of rules from the time he spent in here.

“My bad,” Monty informed as Clarke looked at Aden and sighed.

“Of course it's you,” she said, and Aden wondered if he needed to be offended or not. “Two rules. The first one is that you shall not fight in here or Raven will blow you up, and the second one forbids anyone to stand on that red cross on the floor at eight pm.”

Aden looked down then at the floor and the red cross he probably had been standing on when the clock went to eight pm. He hadn't even noticed it, and in his memories, it was never a cross to him, just some red paint scattered on the floor.

“Sorry.”

Clarke waved him off with one hand, ruffling her hair with the other.

“Don't do it again.”

Aden nodded before he left to take the drink he wanted to take before being tackled down by Clarke while the woman walked toward the couches to salute her friends.

From the tables he was standing next to, once he had his drink in hand, Aden looked over at the couches and at Clarke.

Clarke was part of the things that Aden only had little memories of, but they were the most precious he had. Of course, he had pictures - not much, but some - but a printed piece of paper could never do justice to the way Clarke's whole face lit up when she smiled or laughed.

Aden discarded his drink on the table and ruffled his hair a bit before his hand drifted on his face and he let his index finger roam along his nose for a few seconds. She would always do that whenever he was feeling down or scared. It took some time for him to be able to overcome his negative emotions without Clarke's every little attention toward him, and after some time, as a reminder of her, he took the habit of doing it himself, just like she would have if she had been around.

Aden gazed some more at her before taking his hand off his face and shaking his head.

No matter how hard he had longed for the moment he would be able to see her again, he knew he couldn't dwell on his feelings. This Clarke right here, laughing at some joke Monty just said, wasn't  _his_ Clarke.

Her eyes weren't as bright as he remembered them, and her hands were probably less calloused and overworked than the ones that used to hold him.

This Clarke wasn't his mom.

 

[…]

 

Anya was sitting in Raven's office – well, as much as a backroom inside an unused mall could be called an office – as the Latina was looking at her computer screen. Well, one of her screens anyway, as five of those were lined up next to each other on three different tables.

“Why do you even need so many screens?”

On another table in the corner of the room laid three laptops closed and piled up on each other, while two smartphones rested on top of the pile.

“Magic,” Raven mused with a thoughtful expression as she blinked.

After some time, what she was looking for finally appeared on her screen, and she raised her hand to project it on the fifth screen, the one facing Anya.

“So, I know I said I could maybe do something about your ears, but I'm going to need information first.”

Anya raised a brow while turning her attention to the screen, looking at something that looked like a press article written in Chinese.

Raven went on.

“This is an article that helped me find information about Advanced Humans. Basically, it says that, among us, we can define three types of evolution.”

A folder opened itself on the fourth screen, and pictures of people appeared. Anya took a look at some of them, and Raven kept going.

She explained that the first kind of evolution witnessed within human kind was far older than what the government let on. In the early years of the twenty-first century, some people had shown some rather inhuman physical abilities. Speed wise, strength wise, and sometimes both of them. Those people had been praised at that time because most of them were athletes and were using their abilities to bring honor to their countries during sports events – Raven used Usain Bolt, a Jamaican gold medalist Olympic sprinter, as an example and opened a picture of him on the screen Anya was looking at.

“Body evolution,” Raven said, “it's in their muscles and bones and skin tissues. I believe this is the kind of Advanced Human that Lincoln and Aden are.

When Anya gasped in shock at Raven mentioning Lincoln – the Woods had a no-telling policy about them being Advanced Humans – Raven scoffed.

“He broke my door. He's not really subtle.”

Anya shook her head in disbelief, but she let a smirk appear on her face. When Lincoln got emotional, he could sometimes forget about his strength and could break things. He had always been extremely careful when it came to people he was touching, but furniture? Anya had finger shaped holes in her desk because Lincoln panicked when he brought Octavia to the restaurant for the first time.

The picture changed then, and some press articles – this time in English – from the late twenty first century appeared on the screen. Raven jumped on.

The second form of evolution that had been noticed within human kind appeared way after the first one. Just a hundred years ago for the first reported case; some kid had been able to see things from afar, her eyesight going as far as a one kilometer radius. She could still see after one kilometers, but things started to get blurry, and she could only make out colors and shapes.

“This is a brain form of evolution.”

“Wait, you're losing me here,” Anya said as she leaned away from the screen and on her chair. “There have been multiples analyses of the human brains throughout time, and it had been proven that it was our brains which triggered our body's capacities, strength or speed wise. If this is a brain evolution, why don't you consider Aden or Lincoln as such?”

“Brain research,” Raven started to explain as a radiograph of a brain appeared on the screen. Anya leaned forward again. “If you were to put electrodes on Aden’s head and make him run, full speed or not, the results would be the same as anybody else while they run. Same for an MRI. While the brain is the one that makes his legs run, it still works like anybody else's brain.

“It was different for that girl. Her brain's reactions while looking at something were larger than normal people’s, and an MRI showed that her brain's cells in the area were the information given by the eyes were received held more neurotransmitters than your average human. She had a one-kilometers radius eyesight because her brain evolved enough for her to have one.”

“Okay,” Anya said after some time, “this is the kind of Advanced Human that you are, right?”

Raven nodded her agreement and blinked to open a new folder. She opened a picture and scrolled a bit with her finger, going from one picture to another. She suddenly stopped when Anya ordered her to and left her computer on the picture the woman seemed to have gotten interested in.

“What about them?” Anya asked.

The picture was of Octavia Blake, Lincoln's girlfriend. She was facing someone in it, a man of her age and size, and they seemed to be having some kind of argument - although, from his defeated face and arms raised into the air, the guy was visibly loosing.

“DNA evolution. Or I believe it to be DNA evolution.”

The last kind of evolution that human kind became aware of started to appear a little over fifty years ago. The first case ever known was of a guy who could light up is fingers with a snap without burning his skin off.

“We're seriously lacking information about them, so I had to do my own research. Most of what I know is that their powers are being heavily influenced by their feelings, and they are also the ones the government fear the most. It's not like Aden who can just run extra fast. They see this form of evolution as the most dangerous one because it's harder to control than any other form. I mean, Octavia almost flew me off the first time Lincoln asked her out.”

Wind, Anya had guessed the first time she met her, and it seemed that she was right, if Raven's choice of words were anything to go by. She remembered the first time she met her during the winter. Every window and door of the restaurant had been closed, but the place still felt like one big wind tunnel.

“At first, when I started with Octavia, I hadn't been able to really grasp what was different about her. At some point, I even started to believe that there were no physical differences between her and other Advanced Humans or average people.

“But then came grade-A asshole here,” Raven added as she brought her fingers closer together to zoom on the picture, enlarging the man's face.

“I gave him a place to crash, and in exchange, he let me test a few things on him. Basically, the palm of his hands can create an explosion. While I haven't been able to check his DNA, blame the lack of resources, I have been able to determine that his sweat is different than other people's, which is why I think it comes from his DNA.

“Unlike ours, his sweat is basically five percent water and ninety-five percent glycerin, which is why he can _make it go boom_. As for Octavia, I haven't been able to determine what exactly is different in her sweat, but I have proof of her wind being stronger when she's sweating. This is why their powers are being influenced by their feelings. If you're scared or stressed or any kind of negative feelings, you tend to sweat more, just like when you're excited or overjoyed. And this goes for all of those who showed up and let me test them until now.

“Truth be told,” Raven knit her brows together in thought, “I think they are the strongest kind of Advanced Human. But they're also the most endangered. I mean, all you need to know if you're one is a blood test, which makes it way easier for the government to find you.”

Anya nodded her head approvingly, but she didn't tear her eyes away from the zoomed-in picture on the screen. Her hazel eyes seemed to be transfixed by the screen and the man on it, and she looked at it like she expected him to pop out of it at any moment. Although, from the look in her eyes, Raven wasn't sure if she was going to shake his hand or make him eat it.

“Do you know him?” the Latina asked after some time, and Anya finally looked away from the screen.

She folded her hands on her knees, tight fists on her pants, and seemed to be thinking for a few seconds.

She looked back at the screen after a moment, before turning her head toward Raven.

“Grade-A asshole is my brother.”

 

Thanks to the fastness of his reflexes and muscles, Aden saved his drink right after dropping it, saving his pants in the process.

For some time now, he had propped himself against the wall of Raven's office and listened to the conversation the two women had been having inside. The lack of door even allowed him to do so rather discreetly.

And while none of the information about the different kinds of evolution that Raven had been talking about until now had been news to him, the sudden confession that Anya had just made shattered everything Aden ever thought he knew.

 

[…]

 

Clarke joined Aden on the wall after some time, propping herself next to him as she glanced toward the room facing them. Most of the people present weren't newcomers. They had become regulars at some point, showing up every Friday and just enjoying being around people who could understand them.

Jasper and Monty had been two of the first people showing up at Sky Crew after Raven announced the community's opening on the forum. Miller started to tag along some time later and had been living there for the past few days.

Harper and Monroe were there, too, regulars as well. They usually came with food and drinks to share with everyone, just like Monty who often brought muffins and cakes. They were currently sitting on chairs near one of the tables and talking with Wells, who was standing next to them and sipping on a can of soda.

There were other people she couldn't quite remember the names of, but all in all, she was happy to be part of the people who brought the community together. She was happy to tell that she had helped some of them get the upper hand on their capacities, such as Wells. The black man's magnetism had been off the charts the first time he walked in scared and stressed about the consequences this could have had on him.

After some time, and some meditation and yoga to help him get rid of part of his stress, Raven spent some time explaining to him how it worked and how he could get better control of his magnetism as to not bring every metallic object to him everywhere he went.

Wells looked way better now than the first time he walked in. Clarke mentally patted herself on the back.

“What did you tell your parents?” Clarke asked Aden after some time, and the boy almost choked on his drink.

“Uh,” Aden coughed a bit, “no parents for me.”

Clarke turned her head toward him, and their eyes locked for a bit, Aden just shrugging before bringing his drink back to his lips. The woman opened her mouth to say something again when Aden's phone chirped in his pocket, and while Clarke looked mildly surprised at the ringtone, Aden definitely wore a skeptical expression on his face.

The only person he ever gave his number to was Lexa, because she needed it for work, and he didn't expect to receive anything from her at well past eight on a Friday night.

Aden took his phone out of his pocket and unlocked it swiftly before opening the text he had just gotten.

His skepticism grew as he read the one word long text he had received from a ten digits unknown number.

“I gotta go,” the boy finally said after some time, pocketing his phone and throwing his can into the nearest trash bag.

“I thought you said no parents,” Clarke inquired dubiously, and Aden shook his head.

“No parents,” he repeated, “but, uh, friends. Yeah, friends,” he nodded to himself and went to retrieve his backpack from one of the corners of the room.

He moved fast enough to expect Clarke not to follow him, but the blonde woman was next to him the second he had his hand on the doorknob. The blonde woman put her hand on his shoulder, and Aden stopped midtrack in his door-opening to look over his shoulder.

For half a second maybe, Clarke saw uncertainty in the blond boy's eyes and something akin to fear.

“Be careful,” Clarke said, her hand going to his hair and ruffling it slightly, “and call us if you need help.”

She took her hand away and, taken aback at first, Aden brought his own hand to his nose and scratched it for some seconds before he nodded his head.

“Sure.”

Before Anya had enough time to get out of Raven's office and stop Aden from going wherever he was going – she didn't really care, honestly, the kid was free to do whatever the hell he wanted, but Lexa had asked her to take care of him, and if he wasn't around, she was going to have a hard time doing that – the door opened, and a blast of wind blew between the four walls of the room, shaking the tables and goods on them.

“Shit,” Anya mumbled, still in the entrance of Raven's office as she looked at the opened door on the other side of the room.

Clarke looked over her and watched as Anya ran her hand down her face.

“He's hiding something, isn't he?” Clarke pondered as she walked toward Anya and entered Raven's office.

Anya shrugged as she entered the office too and went to sit back on her chair.

 

[…]

 

Aden stopped running after a few minutes, finding himself far outside of town between grass fields and old abandoned wooded houses.

Almost three weeks ago, he had landed here. And as soon as he got a phone number, he had come back and had carved his phone number on one of the walls of the houses he had landed into with the word “asshole” underneath.

Now that he had gotten the text he had been expecting, and now that he was here, Aden didn't really know if it was a good thing or not.

The boy scratched his nose and took a deep breath before going to one of the houses and pushing the door open. The lack of lights inside made him squint, and he took a flashlight out of the side pocket of his backpack, lighting it up and flashing around him.

“Uh,” a feminine voice came through after he walked into the corridor of the house, the light flashing right into her face, “careful with that shit.”

She squinted a bit to readjust her eyes to the sudden light, and Aden sighed.

“So, they sent you after all,” the boy said as he dropped his backpack on the floor and sat next to it.

“You expected me,” the woman replied as she crossed her arms on her chest on looked over the ground to the boy.

Aden nodded, “it was either you or Roan, but sending Roan would have been dangerous as he already exists in this timeline.”

The woman nodded too, and after some time, decided to sit in front of the boy.

She looked older than him by a few years, maybe two or three, and her face held white angry scars on both her cheeks and forehead. Her hazel eyes looked at the boy quietly for a few minutes, quietly analyzing his features and lines.

She hadn't see him in months, after they crossed paths inside the walls of Azgeda Corporation, and he looked like he had gained ten years in just the span of three months.

His brow creased on his forehead, adding some more years as he looked at his knees.

“My aunt is dead, isn't she?” he quietly wondered, and Ontari scratched her chin, the only place of her face that wasn't healing from bad treatment.

“I'm sorry.”

“Did she suffer?”

“We made it quick.”

Aden closed his eyes and inhaled sharply.

Raven Reyes, his aunt, had been his solace and salvation for years. She took him in after the death of his parents, sheltered him, trained him, put him back on his feet after the tragedies he had gone through. A world she wasn't in was a painful reality Aden didn't want to think of.

“Why are you here, Ontari?” the boy finally asked as he reopened his eyes and locked his gaze on hers.

Ontari scratched her chin some more.

“Why do you think? To kick your ass, of course. I was sent back here to stop you from doing whatever it is that you are trying to do. I was told that the fastest way to get rid of you was to kill your mom, so I've been considering the idea for a while.”

“I won't let you,” Aden warned as his hands balled into fists on his knees, and Ontari nodded her head.

“I would hope not. I have some things to take care of first, though, so mommy dearest is safe.”

Aden raised a brow at her because Ontari was nothing if not one of Nia Queen's most obedient pawns. And to think that she would be doing something other what her mission was brought a strange feeling of hope in the boy's belly.

“You came here to save the world, Aden, and that's good for you. But I came here to save myself.”

Ontari stood from the ground then and dusted off her butt with both her hands before walking out of the corridor and to the door of the house.

“See you next time,” she announced as she opened the door, and then, very quietly, “maybe.”

 

[…]

 

Marcus Kane was a police Major and has been supervising Polis' main police station for two years now.

Marcus Kane used to love his job.

As for as he could remember, he always wanted to be a cop; his life only really began when he graduated from the Police Academy and received his badge. For fifteen years, he had been doing his job, and if he was being honest, he was damn good at it.

But things started to change about three years ago, and the world he used to live in changed from one thing to another, and Marcus wasn't really sure of anything anymore.

The man had decided to become a cop because he wanted to do the right thing, to be one of the good people. Recently, though, he couldn't stop wondering if he was actually doing the right thing. How could he be part of the good ones if the people he was mostly arresting recently were just kids with powers? None of these kids had done anything bad, they just  _were_ _._ And he had to cuff them for it.

The last three years had slowly worked their way up to become the  _worst years of his life._

The Defense Department changed drastically the day Charles Pike got elected at its head, and one absurd law after the other, the country became a despotic place, militaries and polices alike seeking out Advanced Humans anywhere and arresting them.

The first ever law to be voted regarding Advanced Humans had been a proposition of Charles Pike, when he was still in Congress and not the Defense's head just yet. It was a rather discrete one, and it hadn't been targeting Advanced Humans directly. Pike used the excuse of wishing to make everyone safer for the law to be accepted. It was a simple one, really: any medical professional had the obligation to write down and describe their patients abilities, were they to show any, in their medical chart.

That was seven years ago.

It escalated from there, from laws targeting the doctors for “everyone's safety” to laws forbidding Advanced Humans to use their abilities in public for said public's safety. At first, anyone making use of their powers in public could be fined if they were seen by the authorities. Then, said authorities became authorized to arrest anyone using their powers in visible areas. And finally, the last authorization given to police officers and militaries alike were that they were to shoot anyone using their abilities in public if they weren't inclined to let themselves be arrested.

This law, Marcus knew all too well. He had been a witness to its very first application; it happened three years ago, inside the walls of Ark Central Hospital, and he still had vivid memories of that night.

On the night of the fourth of July, Jacob “Jake” Griffin had been driving his way back home from work, going from east to west on the highway, around four in the morning. The thirty-five-year-old man drove past an crashed car and decided to stop and take a look. The driver was still inside, badly injured and running out of blood, and Jake didn't hesitate one bit.

Jake Griffin popped himself out of the highway and into the nearest hospital, bringing the injured man with him. Jake Griffin appeared in the middle of an overworked Emergency Room, crowded with cops and injured civilians.

Police had been called that night around three am to intervene in a bank robbery taking place in the town center, and Marcus and his partner patrolling the area were the first to get to the scene. They called for back-ups as soon as they realized that the door of the bank had been destroyed, and they stepped in.

Marcus's partner got hurt before back-up could come in, crushed by a piece of wall that went flying their way after some time in the bank, and after back-up showed up and the robber escaped, two cars went after him while all the other cops present went to the hospital.

When Jake Griffin miraculously appeared in the ER, a bleeding man lying on the ground next to him, dozens of guns pointed their way at him, along with a cacophony of “freeze” and “put your hands in the air.”

There were no doubts that the man robbing the bank and hurting Marcus' partner was an Advanced Human, just like there were no doubts that Jake Griffin was one, too. And just like that, fear of the unknown and paranoia had lit a fire into Marcus' colleagues.

Taken aback at first, Jake remained calm and explained with a swift yet hushed town that he couldn't put his hands up as asked because, were he to do that, the man on the floor would bleed out. He asked for help then, for anyone really, they could even call his wife if they wanted to, she was on call that night in that very hospital.

Emerson lost it first. His gun pointed directly at Jake's head and the cop opened his mouth after Jake's speech, starting with questions that soon evolved into slurs and screams, and before anyone could do anything, he pressed the trigger.

Marcus would always remember the scream that emerged from one of the corridors leading to the ER. Abbigail Griffin had just gotten there and had seen Emerson press the trigger and the bullet hit her husband.

A wife became a widow, a daughter became an orphan, Emerson received a medal.

This was a world Marcus wasn't sure he wanted to live in, a world in which a man who tried to save another one got murdered by a cop, and the cop got awarded for his “heroic actions.”

And things were not getting any better.

The last new thing pulled up by Charles Pike from his big office somewhere in the capital was that doctors were now obliged to inform authorities if an Advanced Human visited them, just like they had to disclose an Advanced Human's medical chart.

And it was the police's duty to take delivery of these charts and arrest anyone on them.

That was how two of his officers went on a “cuffing mission” on Monday and came back with injured faces, broken arms, and a warrant against some kid called Nathan Miller, who was now accused of resisting the authorities.

Marcus, upon hearing about his injured men and their failed mission, decided to take care of this himself. Miller seemed to be able to defend himself, and the major didn't want to hear about any more of his officers ending up at the hospital.

At first, when he opened Miller's chart, he expected the kid to have some kind of super strength or fire powers; that would have been the least to have after he hurt his officers the way he did, and that would explain why his station was tasked with his arrest. But that wasn't it at all.

Miller just happened to be able to heal whatever injuries came his way. A broken arm? Healed in three hours. Deep cut on his calf? Healed in ten minutes.

Marcus then thought that Miller had some kind of record; maybe he had done something bad and got out of it thanks to his abilities? But Miller's criminal records was blank, unlike his student record which was overflowing with sweet words from teachers and teaching assistants, from ever since he started school to his first year of college.

He was currently in his second year, but there were high chances that he wasn't attending his classes anymore. After the cops showed at his door on Monday, Miller probably went AWOL, and Marcus couldn't really blame him.

Looking back at all the documents concerning Nathan Miller on his desk, Marcus scratched his weeks old beard and thought for a bit. After some minutes, he closed every document and piled them on the side of his desk.

Maybe it was time for Marcus Kane to stop listening to the orders coming from up there, and maybe it was time for Marcus Kane to be who he really was: a cop.

A cop wasn't there to arrest or hurt innocent people.

A cop was there to help and protect.

Marcus Kane's job was being a cop, and if he was being honest, he was damn good at it.

So, he took Miller's chart and put it into one of his desk drawers, hidden from everyone, and decided to focus on something useful for the first time in a while. There had been words of a new drug called CoL circling in his streets, and it was time for him to take care of it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. 
> 
> Again, thanks to my beta for checking up everything ! 
> 
> Comments and kudos are appreciated, let me know what you think !


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Lexa, Raven and Anya, Marcus Kane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ NOTE AT THE END

Of all the people Lexa could have expected to walk into while entering her favorite diner in town on a Thursday evening, Clarke Griffin wasn't one of them. She noticed her as soon as she stepped in; Clarke was hard not to see. With her wavy blonde hair and her bright blue eyes and the soft lines of her face, there were no doubts that more than one customer had noticed her already. Lexa just happened to be one of those customers, except that noticing Clarke Griffin was the one thing she didn't want to do.

She tried to avoid her at first because everything in her guts was telling her to. She put her large black hood on her head, groaning a bit at the sudden heat it brought to her head, and walked toward the desk to order. But of course Gustus, loud and joyful and goofy Gustus, who was manning the register when she walked up, saw her and ordered her to take her hood off because he wanted to see her face and make sure she looked good.

Of course, loud and joyful and goofy Gustus’s deafeaning voice carried all the way to Clarke's table, and upon hearing the name “Lexa,” Clarke's head snapped up, and she looked over.

Their eyes met for a second before Lexa turned her head away and ordered her usual burger with a side of fries and a drink to go.

Gustus raised a brow at her because Lexa never ordered to go. She usually just sat on a stool at the bar to eat and then stayed until they closed.

“What has gotten into you?” the man asked after he turned around and announced a “Lexa to go” to the cook in the kitchen.

A dark skinned, short haired head came into view in the serving hatch, and Lexa kept her sigh to herself.

“Hello, Indra.”

“What do you mean, to go? Is everything all right?” the cook inquired, and Lexa bit the inside of her cheek.

The more she stayed, the more likely she was to be noticed by -

“Hey, Alexandria, right?”

\- Clarke.

“Lexa is fine. Clarke, was it?”

The blonde nodded her head and invited Lexa to sit with her, at which Gustus announced that they should both sit at the bar.

Lexa wasn't dumb enough to believe that Gustus wanted to have any kind of conversation with Clarke. From the way he looked at the blonde, the man couldn't care less about her, but Gustus was over-protective of people he cared for, and Lexa was one of them. He had known her for a while now, and while he believed her to be perfectly able to take care of herself, he knew that nothing was ever really safe, and that some help if need be could never hurt.

Clarke waited for any kind of answer from Lexa, sitting quietly next to her, as she looked at the woman's form and face. Lexa looked... stiff. She had noticed that at the restaurant already, the way the brunette always sat with her back straight and the way her face always remained unaffected and blank of any kind of emotions. It was unsettling, to say the least, but Lexa was also extremely pretty. Her jawline was sharp, but her eyes were soft, and she seemed to have the bad habit of biting the inside of her cheek whenever she was thinking too hard.

After some time awkwardly standing in the middle of the diner, Clarke on her right and Gustus on her left behind the desk, Lexa sighed and gave up, walking toward her usual stool and sitting on it, looking over at Clarke and then the stool next to her, inviting her over.

Clarke smiled as she sat next to her, and Gustus propped his heavily tattooed arms on the bar, looking at Lexa for some seconds before turning to Clarke and asking her what she wanted to eat.

“Uh... It' my first time here so, whatever you think would fit me the most?” Clarke asked and Gustus thought for a while.

“Cheese kinda girl, am I right?”

Clarke nodded her head again, a bright smile splitting her face, and Gustus nodded his head as well.

"Drink?”

“Water will do, thank you.”

Gustus got away from the counter to announce the order to the cook and went to get both Clarke and Lexa's drinks before dropping them in front of them with clean glasses and leaving again, giving some privacy to the two women.

“We didn't see you on Friday,” Clarke said as she uncapped her bottle of water and poured some in her glass.

Was something supposed to happen on that day, Lexa wondered as she thought of last Friday. Eight hundred and fifty-two orders, only four percent of which were late deliveries, and Raven saying something about her crew.

“The... Weekly Sky Crew meeting, right?” She finally remembered Raven's invitation. “I had some things to take care of, and I wouldn't have been of use anyway.”

Clarke creased her brows at that, and Lexa didn't elaborate any further. As the blonde woman was about to press her to say more, Gustus appeared in front of them, a plate in each hand.

“A barely-cooked triple Rodeo burger for you,” he announced as he set a plate in front of Lexa, “and a medium-cooked Extreme Cheese for you.” He put the second plate in front of Clarke before putting cutleries next to each plates and going back to the register.

“How can you even _eat_ that?” Clarke wondered in awe as she looked at Lexa's plate.

Lexa's burger was far bigger than Clarke's, holding three beaf patties between two toasted buns instead of one.

“I have a large appetite.” Lexa shrugged as she grabbed her fork and started eating her fries.

“I can tell.” Clarke laughed as she did the same, savoring the first bite of her freshly cut french fries.

“A fair warning before you start eating your burger would be that the simple thought of going back to McDonald's after that might make you queasy,” Lexa warned and wondered, after she finished her sentence, what had gotten into her.

Lexa wasn't one for small talk, or any kind of talk, really. Her communication skills usually stopped were they needed to stop, as in, she never said something that didn't _need_ to be said. And this conversation she was having with Clarke was definitely not something she needed.

“I wasn't under the impression that you could be funny.” Clarke laughed then. “You're the scariest person Jasper has ever met.”

“Scaring Jasper is a necessity I have come to accept. The more scared he is, the less likely he is to mess up at work.”

Clarke smiled as she put her fork back on the counter and took her burger into her hands, weighing the softness of the buns before taking a bite.

Clarke moaned as she chewed, and Lexa felt the urgent need to put her gloves back on, her hands growing cold at the sudden noise. An unsettling warm feeling pooled in her stomach, and she decided to ignore every voice ringing in her brain urging her to run away from here.

From Clarke.

“You were right,” Clarke stated after swallowing. “I'm not stepping into a McDonald's ever again.”

Lexa almost smirked at that.

 

[…]

 

Aden snapped a picture of one of the press articles in his blue folder and took extra care of hiding the publication dates and the name of the writer. He then proceeded to send the picture to both Lexa and Anya, with a caption asking if they should worry about this.

Truth be told, this article was only supposed to come out in a few days time, but those few days were essential.

Back in his time, when the article came out, TriKru only had a day to prepare themselves before the work inspectors came in and asked for every person present to go through a blood test.

While companies were allowed to hire Advanced Humans, it wasn't something the government appreciated, or even agreed with.

A new law was on the way; Aden knew it, a devastating one, that would put Clarke out of a job and get at least thirty percent of TriKru Meal arrested.

While the first part of the plan had been to get in touch with some people - mostly Clarke, Lexa, and Raven - the second part of the plan was to avoid this. He couldn't avoid Clarke going out of job because the blonde could not give her blood results to her employer without putting herself at risk, but he could make sure that TriKru was ready to face whatever the government was going to throw at them.

Aden's smartphone screen turned black with the lack of answer coming from Lexa and Anya, and the boy sighed.

The article would go out on Wednesday, and the work inspectors would show up on Thursday.

They had a week.

Aden closed his folder and took a deep breath. He prayed to whoever might hear him for it to be enough.

 

[…]

 

Anya's phone chirped, and Raven, laying underneath Anya who was straddling her, groaned when the woman picked it up from where it rested on her bedside table.

“Seriously? I'm half-naked and that's what you decide to focus on?”

“Maybe you're not as irresistible as you think you are.” Anya shrugged as she opened the text she’d just received from Aden.

She read the caption first, and her brows creased on her forehead before she zoomed in on the picture attached to it. She read the article he had snapped a picture of three times before she got off Raven.

“Well, goodbye coitus, I guess,” Raven said as she laid on her side to watch Anya sit on the edge of the bed and re-read the article once more.

“I gave you like, three orgasms already, stop complaining.”

Raven noticed the tension in Anya's shoulders and how it got worse every time she re-read the article.

“What's up?” the Latina asked as she sat up and grabbed her shirt from the side of the bed, putting it back on.

Anya turned her phone toward the woman next to her, and Raven squinted her eyes to take a proper look at the small letters dancing on the screen. She only read the article once before sitting back on the bed, brow creased on her forehead, deep-thinking face on.

“Can they even do that?” Raven wondered after a while, and Anya shrugged.

“They can do whatever the hell they want as long as they get the majority.”

“There are more and more Advanced Humans out there. It's not like they're all going to let it pass.”

“Unless they take us down before we can do anything about it. I mean, that's basically what they're trying to do, isn't it?”

Raven gave it some thought before she nodded gravely.

The government was taking them down, one by one. Hunting them, slowly tracking them through their medical records, and arresting every one of them they could find.

They tried with Miller because his abilities were written in his medical records – although Miller was rather secretive about them, and no one really knew what they were all about. They could go after any of them that once met a doctor who respected the laws.

Raven's thoughts went back to the article Aden had sent Anya.

Companies would soon have the obligation to force their employees to have a blood test before signing a contract. Up until then, it was highly recommended to do so, but not mandatory. Now, if the article was anything to go by, companies that did not follow those recommendations were going to be under investigation. From the number of employees TriKru Meal had, there was a high chance of them being under investigation soon. If not under it already.

“Let's say what you said about different kinds of Advanced Humans was true-”

“It is true,” Raven cut in, and Anya nodded.

“So, if it's true, we only need to protect the kids that are category three, right?”

“Yeah, basically,” Raven nodded, “and Aden.”

Anya raised a brow at that because, if what Raven had said about Advanced Humans was true, then Aden didn't risk anything from a blood test.

“What about Aden?”

“I've read the article, and there's something odd about it. Basically, I'm the owner and one of the most active admins of the forum. I have a lot of screens in my office, and I'm connected to every kind of media ever posting about Advanced Humans and new laws, wether they're about us or not. I basically know everything.”

Anya nodded, but she still didn't see where Raven was going with this.

“Aden took precious care of hiding the dates and the author of the article, and I believe that's because that article isn't out _yet_.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Reyes?”

“Either Aden has intel that I don't have when it comes to this kind of stuff, or he's from the future.”

 

“And honestly?” Raven added as an afterthought. “I hardly believe he can have more intel than I do.”

 

Raven was fast asleep in her bed as Anya was looking at her computer, silently praying to find a solution that could help everyone. She looked into the data she kept about all the kids working for her and Lexa at the company, and remembering what she learnt from Raven a few days back, she managed to isolate twenty-two kids that needed protection if that law were to pass.

Based on the article, it was most likely to happen, but she couldn't just straight up tell those kids they needed to quit. Some of them didn't have families or any other kind of income.

She thought of Tris; the small blonde girl lost her parents to a car accident and had nothing left for her than this job and college.

Brian; he still lived at his dad’s, but the situation at home wasn't ideal, and the money he earned from the job helped him keep his family afloat and feed his little brother.

And so many others.

Anya re-opened the article on her phone and re-read it once again, giving a great deal of attention to the part explaining the law’s proposition: any employee currently under a contract in a private company would have to take a blood test and give full disclosure of the results to their employers, and the employers then would have to give the results of any of their declared employees to the government. Any new employee coming into a company would have to show up with blood test results upon signing a contract, and if they were to sign the contract, the employers would have to divulge those results to the government.

Anya thought hard for some time, and it wasn't helping that Lexa wasn't answering her phone, really.

Anya had always been the brawn, while Lexa and Lincoln were the brain – although Lincoln's abilities tended to go against that statement. Lexa and Lincoln were both always so much better at thinking, while Anya was just really good at giving orders and punching things.

Anya then thought of what Raven had said about Aden. The kid was weird and didn't seem to be leaving them any time soon, and he totally popped out of nowhere one day and just decided to stick around as soon as he was given the chance. But to think that he was from the future? That was honestly a bit too much.

“So I might have an idea,” a grumpy voice said from the door of the bedroom, and Anya startled out of her thoughts. Truth be told, she had been so focused, she hadn't heard Raven standing up from the bed and walking up to the door.

The Latina woman had put her hair into a messy ponytail and was wearing one of Anya's boxer briefs and her white tank top.

“Weren't you asleep?”

“I don't sleep, I process. Unless I'm high, then I sleep like a fucking baby.”

“What do you mean, you don't sleep?”

“Maybe my abilities aren't what you think of them.” Raven shrugged as she walked up to Anya and blinked to her computer, opening a new internet page.

“Sure, hijack my computer babe, wanna see my porn collection as well?”

“Pet-names already?” Raven smirked and Anya grumbled.

“Don't let it go to your head.”

“And here I thought you didn't care. Although, we'll definitely get back to that porn collection later. In the meantime, let me save your company, will you?”

Anya let Raven sit on her lap as she started explaining her ideas while opening different tabs on her internet browser.

 

[…]

 

Clarke's original plan, upon seeing Lexa at the diner she had decided to eat at that day, was to convince her to dine with her and get information from her about Aden.

The plan totally backfired.

Clarke didn't expect Lexa to be interesting or even talkative, but after she broke through the two layers of guarded apprehension, Lexa just happened to be the perfect nerd Clarke didn't expect her to be.

From the way her face didn't seem to really open whenever she was talking, any bystanders would have thought that Lexa didn't care much about their conversation, but Clarke saw the way her eyes lit up whenever something sparked her interest.

They talked about music and TV shows, and Clarke realized that Lexa's interests were set more than a hundred years ago.

“The twenty-first century was far more interesting when it came to music, at least. TV shows only really trashed the LGBT+ community, saved for some exceptions.”

“What kind of music do you usually listen to?” Clarke asked, and Lexa seemed to grow shy for a second.

“Mostly metal bands,” she said after some time, and Clarke smiled.

Her dad liked music from the twenty-first century, and metal songs used to be blasted out loud in the car when he would drive her wherever. Her mom loathed it, though. It only made it better for Clarke as heavy screams and loud basses were _their_ things. Hers and her dad’s only.

Her smile fell slightly, and Lexa seemed to notice, knitting her brow together.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm good,” Clarke nodded, “so metal, huh? My dad used to listen to it too, but since he passed, I can't listen to his bands without feeling like crying anymore. It's been three years, but...” Clarke trailed off and shrugged, and something seemed to click in Lexa's mind.

Clarke _Griffin_.

Three years.

Three years ago, she was still in the military, but she heard the news. The first ever Advanced Human to be executed just for being one. The press said that he tried to attack the police officer back in the hospital, but things never seemed to add up. The articles had just been written in a way that appraised the police and dragged her community down.

He had been a husband.

A father.

Shot straight in the head.

Lexa raised her hand and put it on Clarke's shoulder, squeezing lightly.

“You're Jacob Griffin's daughter.”

Clarke gravely nodded her head, her smile long gone, and Lexa squeezed some more.

“I'm sorry for your loss. It was... It should have never happened.”

Clarke nodded her head, taking a deep breath while doing so, tears threatening to fall down her eyes if she ever so much as looked at Lexa.

“I lost someone, too,” Lexa said as she took her hand off Clarke's shoulder and balled it into a fist on the counter. “Her name was Costia. She was mine, and I loved her. But... Life got in the way, I guess. I thought I would never get over the pain, but somehow I did.”

“How did you do it? I can't even -” the woman took a raged breath “- I can't even listen to his favorite song, and it's a stupid song about porn.”

Clarke hiccuped, tears finally falling down from her eyes, and Lexa put her hand back on her, in the middle of her back, and drew comforting circles with the palm of her hand.

“I recognized it for what it was. Weakness.”

Clarke hiccuped once more and took a glance at the woman sitting next to her. Lexa's face was expressionless, but her eyes shone bright. On the counter, her hand was balled into a fist while the other kept drawing comforting circles on Clarke's back. For a very short second, Clarke believed she saw Lexa's fist turn slightly blue, but Lexa took it off the the counter to shake it on the side.

“What is?” Clarke asked, tears slowing to a stop. “Love?”

“Yes,” Lexa answered honestly as she took her hand away from Clarke's back.

“So you're trying to tell me that you stopped caring about everyone?”

“Yes.”

Clarke rubbed her hands under her eyes, erasing any traces of tears rolling down her cheeks, before she chuckled a bit.

“You're the worst liar I've ever met, Lexa. Don't tell me that you don't care about anyone. You care so much that you built an entire company hiring Advanced Humans. You care so much that you hired a fifteen year old kid as your room boy. You care so much that -” Clarke stopped mid-sentence when she noticed Lexa's hand balled into a fist on the counter again.

Her knuckles were turning white under the strength of her balled hands, and she seemed to be focusing on her breathing. When she turned her head toward Clarke to answer her, she didn't have time to say anything as the blonde grabbed her hood and shoved it over her head.

“You're snowing,” Clarke simply commented.

Lexa lifted her eyes to look up at her own head and noticed the small snowflakes falling down around her. She opened her hand and threw it in her pocket to grab a twenty dollar bill to set on the counter.

“I have to go,” Lexa stated as she abruptly stood from her stool.

Before Clarke could say anything more, Lexa was out the door and gone.

 

Lexa didn't sleep that night.

 

Anya showed up early at the restaurant. As she expected, Lexa was already there, and tons of papers were filling her desk, along with her computer and the one Aden usually used during his shift.

“Did you even sleep?” Anya asked as she grabbed her chair and dragged it next to her sister.

Lexa shrugged.

“Sorry I didn't reply yesterday. I was... preocupied.”

“I think I found a solution, but we have to get on it now. I asked for a few of the kids to show up early.”

Early was quite the word, really, as Tris, Brian, Dax, and some others came in the restaurant only a few minutes after Anya.

The taller woman gestured for them to come to their side of the restaurant as she grabbed her bag and opened it, taking some papers out of it.

“Alright kids, I asked you to come early because the government is trying to fuck with us.”

“When are they not,” Tris asked, and Brian nodded his head.

“True, but anyway. I need you to fill out those forms. All of you if you wanna keep working here.”

The kids exchanged looks with each other before reaching for the papers Anya was handing them. Tris got her pencil case out of her backpack and gave pens to everyone before she got to her own forms.

“What's the plan?” Lexa asked after some time.

“The law only targets employees, so I'm turning them into contractors. No contracts required to work with them, which means the government can't ask us for blood tests. I checked; there's still no law targeting contractors, so they should be good for some time.”

“Shouldn't we make all the kids become contractors then?”

Anya shook her head, because she asked the exact same question to Raven the night before.

“It would seem weird if all of our employees suddenly became contractors. For now, it's just the kids that are the most vulnerable, but maybe later on we should do it for all of them. As long as the government doesn't go after contractors, we're golden.”

“What do you mean, the most vulnerable?” Lexa wondered with a brow raised.

“Raven gave me some intel about Advanced Humans, the stuff the military refused to tell us back then. Not all Advanced Humans are the same, and some of us won't be noticeable through a blood test, while others would.”

Aden came into the restaurant as the two women kept discussing the matter. The boy walked to them and saluted them both before yawning loudly, tears pricking at his eyes.

“Rough night?” Anya wondered.

Aden just shrugged as he took his chair next to Lexa's and yawned again.

Then the door of the restaurant opened once more, and out of all the people the three staff members and the dozens of delivery persons expected to see that early, Marcus Kane wasn't one of them.

 

[…]

 

“Griffin?” Raven's brow raised high on her forehead as she walked into Sky Crew's base that morning.

Clarke should be at work.

“What are you doing here?”

Clarke looked upset and defeated at the same time. She was fidgeting with her fingers while sitting next to Miller on one of the couches in the middle of the room.

“My boss knows some people in the government. He called this morning and told me not to come back unless I could give him some blood test results attesting I'm not an Advaned Human. Guess I just lost my job.”

Clarke forced a smile, and Raven shook her head. “Stop that, it's creepy.”

The blonde's face fell almost immediately, and Raven walked toward her before she slumped herself on both Clarke and Miller. They both groaned as the Latina announced a group hug, and while Miller absolutely didn't move, he let Clarke put her head on his shoulder, and her hands closed into fists in Raven's shirt fabric.

“I don't even know why I'm sad. I hated this job. And Miller's life sucks way more than mine.”

“You're not allowed to take pity on me.”

“I'm not, just stating that I'm not that much in the shit.”

“True.”

“Alright,” Raven cut in as she stood from her spot on them both, “get ready. I'm gonna get changed, and then we'll all go to TriKru.”

“I can’t,” Miller shook his head, not willing to put himself or anyone else in danger.

“TriKru's windows are one-way mirrors, so as long as you don't go out, you're good. Get ready.”

Clarke followed after Raven when the brunette went to her office to put some clean clothes on, and the blonde asked her where she had spent the night.

Raven shrugged, “I had some fun and saved the world.”

“Don't overdo it, you know your body can't always follow your brain.”

“I had some process time, don't worry.”

“Good.”

Raven put a clean tank top on and walked back into the main room, urging Miller to get up from his ass and join both her and Clarke so that they could go.

Miller complied easily, eager to get out of there. Even if going to TriKru meant he would have to deal with Jasper for some time, he was more than willing to do anything other than looking at the walls for hours before anyone came in to visit him.

“Alright,” Clarke announced, and Raven took one of Miller hands while she put the other on Clarke's shoulder. Miller also put his free hand on her shoulder, and Clarke took a deep breath. “Let's go.”

They popped out.

 

[…]

 

Nine-thirty. The clock facing Anya showed nine-thirty, and before she could process why she was so aware of the time of the day, Raven, Clarke, and Miller popped into the restaurant, right before the stairs.

Nine-thirty. It wasn't everyday, but whenever Clarke could drop her off, Raven would show up at nine-thirty.

It usually wasn't a problem. It usually was pretty great to have Raven here at nine-thirty because she would get the computers ready for the shift, and Anya could focus on the kids instead of the algorithms.

But today of all days, there was a police officer in the restaurant.

Today of all days, Marcus Kane was standing in the middle of the restaurant.

Today of all days, Raven, Clarke, and Miller popped into the restaurant right between Marcus Kane, still standing in the middle of the room, and Lexa, standing at the top of the three little stairs leading to the back room of the restaurant.

Everything and everyone froze.

The kids, sitting in the corner of the restaurant, previously filling out their contractor forms, stopped writing.

Lexa, previously speaking about one thing or another with the police officer, closed her mouth.

Marcus himself closed his mouth and stood straighter once he noticed something had gotten in his line of vision between him and Lexa.

Marcus also noticed how the air around him had become stiff, and how the temperatures seemed to be going down, and down.

And down.

“What the-” is all he had time to say before he heard to door close shut behind him, and he found himself trapped in inside.

Somehow, Marcus knew what it meant.

Advanced Humans protected their own.

Wether they knew each other or not, wether they were enemies of sort or not, there was a beautiful bond linking Advanced Humans together. They stood strong and indivisible in front of a common enemy.

Currently, Marcus was that common enemy.

There were no doubts that they would take him down in no time if he were to do the wrong thing. He was the cop standing in a room full of Advanced Humans, and he was the cop asking weird questions to Lexa about her people. There was no reason for them to trust him, and he totally understood that.

Marcus was the danger to them.

And he was also in danger.

When the severity of the situation finally hit him, Marcus threw his hands in the air, well above his head for anyone to see them.

“I am not here to arrest anyone,” he claimed calmly.

All the conferences he had to attend over the past years to learn more about Advanced Humans and their behavior and how to successfully arrest them came back to his mind suddenly. They all had said the same thing: Advanced Humans were like wild animals, and you needed to attack before being attacked.

Marcus stood his ground and shook the thought out of his brain. He would not attack.

“I am not here to arrest anyone,” the cop repeated, voice steady and slow. “There's a holster up my right side with a gun in it,” he informed them as looked over at Lexa.

Surely, Lexa was some kind of chief in here; she was the owner of this company, and probably some kind of leader in the Advanced Human community. If anyone, he needed to convince her.

“ _Onya,_ ” Lexa mumbled as she descended the three little steps she had been standing at, and her sister followed suit, even walking ahead of her as they reached the ground. Anya walked to the police officer, who kept his hand high above his head, ignoring the cramping of his muscles.

“I am a certified soldier,” Anya informed him as she stood before him. “If you try anything, I will knock you down. Do you understand?”

Marcus nodded his head and slightly turned to the side. Anya got better access to his holster then, and his gun, right under his jacket. She took it out of the holster and disengaged it swiftly, taking the magazine off and checking for any remaining bullets in the barrel.

“ _Heda,”_ Anya called then, and Lexa avanced toward Marcus.

The brunette put herself between Marcus and the three new people he still hadn't seen the faces of in what the officer recognized the be a protective stance.

“Why are you here?” she asked as she took a step closer to him.

Marcus exhaled a shaky breath, and the man wasn't sure if he should be surprised or not to see a white puff of air escaping his mouth.

The closer Lexa was getting, the colder he felt.

“Why are you here?” Lexa repeated, voice sharp.

It wasn't just a question she was asking. She was ordering him to answer with her tone and her look.

In all his life, ever since the beginning of his career in the police force, Marcus had seen authoritativeness. He had seen it in some of his colleagues and superiors; some people were natural leaders because of the way they could get people to obey their every order without even raising their voice. But this woman before him was something else entirely.

Lexa's posture and voice and eyes screamed power and leadership. The way she stood between him and her people showed how she cared for all of them and how she'd descend into battle to protect them.

In another life, she could have been commanding an army.

“I'm looking for information about some drugs currently circulating Polis' streets. It would appear that the people being targeted by those drugs are mostly Advanced Humans.”

“And what exactly made you believe that you would find that information here?”,Lexa inquired, a single brow raised on her forehead.

“In an attempt to get the government off their backs, most companies hiring more than thirty people gave away some blood results over the past year. You did not.”

“Is that all you've got?”

“That,” Marcus nodded his head, “and those guys’ little stunt earlier,” he said as he shook his head toward the three backs still turned to him.

“What would you do,” Anya asked then as she walked toward him and stood next to Lexa, “if one of the most researched Advanced Humans in town happened to be in this restaurant right now?”

“I am not here to arrest anyone,” Marcus almost gruffed.

Lexa looked at him for several seconds, and Marcus held her gaze, almost uncomfortable.

Marcus was in his forties; he had been recognized by many of his peers for his hard work and perfect running of his station. He was the authority in town. Lexa was a child compared to him, not even twenty-five, and ruling over a small delivery company. But there was something about that child that made him feel like he should kneel before her and apologize for disturbing her day.

“Fine,” Lexa said after some time, and she broke eye contact to turn toward Anya standing next to her.

“You will take care of today's preparation along with Aden and Raven,” the brunette told her, and Marcus seemed to understand the way the company worked a little more.

Anya was Lexa's second in charge.

Aden was the boy that was suddenly standing next to Anya, and the Asian woman knocked him behind the head.

“Don't do that,” she warned him, and the boy shrugged.

This one was far to young to be working here. Then again, Marcus himself was absolutely not following the orders - or the laws - he had been given at the moment, so he wasn't going to say anything about some underage kid probably working off the book.

The air was slowly getting warmer; Marcus noticed as he breathed out and no white puff of air appeared.

“Let us talk,” Lexa called after the police officer as she walked up the stairs and into the back of the restaurant behind boxes and unused chairs.

Marcus looked up to Anya, who nodded for him to follow, and he went after the brunette and disappeared into the back of the restaurant.

Raven let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding once the man dissappeared from her eyesight.

“New rule,” Anya announced as she turned toward Raven, Clarke, and Miller, “you call me before popping in.”

Raven nodded her head in approbation, and as she tried to turn to add something, she realized how tightly Clarke was holding her hand.

“Babe, you good?” she asked as she turned to her friend, and Clarke's hold got even tighter.

“I -” Clarke started, but stopped almost immediately, taking a raging breath. “He was at my dad's funeral – I remember him talking with mom at some point.”

“He said his name was Marcus Kane,” Anya said as she got closer to Clarke and Raven, a brow raised on her forehead. “Should we not trust him?”

“I -” Clarke trailed of, brow furrowed on her forehead. “I don't know...”

Anya seemed to think for a bit, as puzzled as Clarke was, debating with herself.

“Go with her,” Anya decided after some time. “You're the leader of your own part of the community, so like, go sit with her and listen to whatever he has to say. And tell her about the funeral, too.”

Clarke nodded and went as told.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone ! 
> 
> As some of you may have noticed, the original second chapter of the story is gone. Don't worry, I'm still planning on talking about what happened in Aden's time, but as I don't want the story to be held back for a year (Origamis' readers know what I'm talking about), I decided to proceed defferently. 
> 
> The second part of this story, "Born from the ashes", will be posted in the same serie as this one, and will tell us the story of Clarke, Lexa, Aden, and everyone, up until Aden goes back in time. 
> 
> I also changed the chapter's name because I lost inspiration on those and maybe that will change again, I'm not sure, but anyway. 
> 
> Bear with me fellas, I still have no idea what I'm doing. I hope you liked that chapter. Leave a comment and tell me what you think !


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